Steve Jobs, Money Cult Rapped by Soloist Daisey: Berkeley Rep

He deconstructs this force in “The Last Cargo Cult,” the
more far-reaching of the monologues. (The second carries the
intriguing, if slightly misleading, title, “The Agony and the
Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.”)

“Cargo Cult” is a meditation on money told like a travel
story with side trips. Daisey, whose lefty, anger-fueled
perorations are familiar to audiences at New York’s Public
Theater, flies to the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu and then
the island of Tanna, where money has never caught on.

Instead, the locals barter and practice a “cargo cult,”
he tells us, in which a U.S. soldier from World War II named
John Frum is worshipped as a god. (They hope he will shower them
with Western goods.)

Dressed in black and sitting at a plain wooden table,
Daisey speaks for two hours without intermission. He’s funny,
smart and profane, using weird voices and improvised sound
effects to make his points. Behind him is a gigantic wall of
cardboard boxes printed with the consumer product names that the
people back in Vanuatu dream about.

Lots of Zingers

He offers a clever assortment of anecdotes and zingers to
convince us that money is powerful and not to be trusted. (“The
most interesting thing about money is how it’s corrosive of
human relationships,” is his somewhat banal mantra.)

Daisey recalls growing up poor in Maine, where the summer
visitors looked down on the townies. He admits to renting,
rather than owning, his Manhattan apartment. He performs in the
Hamptons, where “the public beach costs $40.” (Actually, it’s
the parking sticker that costs $40. Walkers swim free.)

“We love money,” he says, “because we can use it to draw
a line in the sand and say, ‘This is mine.’”

“The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” dissects
another cult -- the one surrounding Apple Inc. and its sexy
product line -- and features another trip, to the Chinese city
of Shenzhen, where the iPhone is made. The show also tells the
story, now legendary in Silicon Valley, of the rise, fall and
ascension of co-founder Steve Jobs.

Daisey is an Apple fanatic who can rave about the kerning
of type fonts. At the same time, he calls Jobs “the master of
the forced upgrade,” or what we used to call “planned
obsolescence.”

Daisey explains that Foxconn employees work 12- and 14-hour
days, that some stressed-out workers committed suicide and that
in response, the company offered employees a significant raise.
Daisey describes the nets that were installed to thwart leapers.
He interviews employees who are still children.

“I talked with workers 12 years old,” he said, pausing
before his punch line: “And do you think Apple doesn’t know?”